No 7 (2023)

      

The article deals with the 2011- 2021dynamics of the reproductive attitudes of adult fertile women living in St.-Petersburg, including 3 preferred numbers of children measured (ideal, desired and expected numbers). The survey results based on telephone interviews with this group’s representatives showed the effects of the information influence as an instrument of public demographic policy over the period. On the one hand, positive effect is stated: the average expected number of children has increased. However, this happened because of the contribution of women aged 30-44. The main conclusions present also negative trends: an increase in percentage of women focused on childlessness, a deterioration in attitudes towards marriage registration, a continuing increase in the average age which St.-Petersburg women believe is the best for childbearing (both the first and the last). Problems with having more children, according to women’s reviews, were ranked. The survey shows that the stimulating effect of social support to families with children (maternity capital, etc.) remains limited. The women’s self-evaluation shows a deteriorating trend in their reproductive health.

The article discusses St. Petersburg residents’ attitudes and practices to receiving psychological help via Internet. The growth of online psychological help popularity seems to be expected due to accelerated digitalization of Russian society and psychological online services development. The aim of the study is to identify socio-demographic predictors affecting prevalence of distant psychological assistance among St. Petersburg residents. The study was conducted using quantitative strategy, a telephone survey (CATI) was applied (N=1200). As for data analysis, linear and correlation analysis were employed as well as regression modeling. Findings reveal that the practice of seeking psychological help was widespread (35% of St. Petersburg residents). At the same time, almost ¼ of them received remote assistance. In 2022, a drastic growth of the need for psychological assistance is noticeable. The study showed that the use of digital practices in psychological help is mainly influenced by social predictors: age, presence of minor children, external stigmatization by a social environment. However, the stigmatization phenomenon seems to be ambivalent and cannot be used as a key predictor for the choice of distant assistance. Our conclusions urge further elaboration of factorial study and broader replacement of the stigma concept by more relevant and expanded theoretical models explaining pathways of psychological help seeking.

The article analyzes the body of social sciences and humanities knowledge about the process and results of mastering patient’s role in childhood. A definition is offered of a minor patient role as a transitive state of behavior for the development of medical-preventive and medical-therapeutic actions aimed at sustaining one's health. The problems of normative institutionalization and habituation, as well as objectification of such practices for the child are discussed. Basing on a study of modern childhood events impact on the development of independence and growing up, conclusions were made about the importance of role-playing training by way of practicing routine everyday activities: performing medical manipulations on one’s own body at home in case of illness and visiting a doctor. A correlation was found between the age of mastering the elements of this role in the process of socialization and the gender of the respondents, the type/composition of the parental family, its wealth, place of residence and medical infrastructure. In conclusion, the necessity is substantiated to study childhood socialization process for the formation of healthy adult members of society leading a correct lifestyle, and self-preserving behavior of people with disabilities.

The focus of the article is on urban educated young people's perceptions of individual and generational futures. Drawing on perspectives from the sociology of transition to adulthood, the organization of biographies and the generational approach, qualitative interviews collected in 2020 and 2022 with St Petersburg residents aged 19-25 were analyzed. The study showed that socio-political events lead to a transformation of the generational narrative. The discourse of a bright generation, open to the future, is replaced by heterogeneous types of interpretation of the perspectives of one's own life and the generation as a whole. Three key narrative modes have been identified in which life experiences have been linked to representations of life perspectives: an 'absent future', an 'adaptive future' and an 'normalised future'. As the process of generational change is incomplete, this study captures some moments of dynamic change and raises new questions rather than providing final answers.

Conceptually the article is built upon cultural trauma theory. The study, based on a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted in the late 1990s, reveals specific distinctions of the collective memory of villagers in the proximity of a former corrective labor colony for political detainees in Perm Krai, on the site of which the Memorial Museum and Reserve of the Political Repression History "Perm-36" currently works. The interviewers found out that the locals refuse to play the role of witnesses to the colony’s life, and that it exists in their memory rather as an alien and non-transparent object. Therefore, formally speaking about detainees, local residents actually talk about themselves, creating an image of their own life with forced labor, everyday hardships and shortages, which, in some historical periods, did not differ much from life in the labor camps. By contrast, the colony is represented in their collective memory as a well-organized and rich enterprise, and the life of detainees looks like deserving envy. Working there in the eyes of the local residents is sometimes associated with the possibility to improve one’s labor conditions and to move up the social ladder. The few relatively detailed narratives, most likely, originate from mass media of the early 1990s, when the topic of Soviet repression was broadly discussed. Most of the collective farmers view the museumification of the colony as meaningless, considering it a fraud and a waste of money. Exhibits of the memorial museum, where their vision is not presented, are seen by the locals as an encroachment on their own history. Encouraged by the interviewers to talk about the colony that is unimportant for them, villagers try to narrate about themselves, denying that they are "witnesses" to anything. These particular cases discussed in the article demonstrate that entire social groups (for example, the peasantry) are excluded from the national historical memory, and that such groups have to bear testimony of their traumatizing experience in an indirect way. The authors conclude that the routine approach to commemorating political repressions needs to be reconsidered in order to work out a comprehensive memory politics, because as long as the above-mentioned groups remain deprived of the opportunity to theorize and to construct their own version of cultural trauma, it remains impossible to create a common national narrative that makes sense of the XX century repressions.

Legal literacy is considered as a complex of cognitive, activity and motivational components of the consciousness of student youth. Data based on a questionnaire survey conducted in 2022 (N = 405). These results are compared with the data of the all-Russian survey "Legal Literacy of Russians" (2020), and supplemented by focus groups in the two largest universities in Tyumen. It was revealed that the students-respondents, in comparison with the population of Russia as a whole, have a more fully formed cognitive component and legal attitudes, but to a lesser extent - legal skills. Both among young and adult Russians, in certain situations, about half of the respondents consider breaking the law acceptable. The main institutions for the formation of legal literacy were the family and the education system, and to a lesser extent the media. Cluster analysis revealed six types of students with very different degrees of legal literacy. Types characterized by its high level accounted for only a quarter of the sample.